


shake off the night

by tosca1390



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-30
Updated: 2010-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-14 15:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Like clockwork and earwax jelly beans and his parents’ love, it was an elemental truth: she would be here on this birthday.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	shake off the night

**Author's Note:**

> Fpr the [](http://community.livejournal.com/hpgw_otp/profile)[**hpgw_otp**](http://community.livejournal.com/hpgw_otp/) Five-Year Anniversary Fest! My prompt was _copper_.

*

Harry woke up on his eighteenth birthday sweat-soaked and stuck to the plain blue sheets Mrs. Weasley kept for company, dreaming of curses and kills.

It was early yet; the sun just poking through the open window, copper-orange flares through the thick panes, filmy with dust. Bill and Charlie’s old room, devoid of the posters and knick-knacks that made it singularly theirs, was all bare-boards and scuffed floors. His trunk stood against the wall near the closet, still full, despite Mrs. Weasley’s pleas to unpack, make himself at home; he liked it this way. He couldn’t get comfortable this way, he was always ready to move, to go. Long cold months of camping and evading capture did that to a person.

He glanced at the window, the curls and whorls of weak light through glass, refracting and reflecting like spells in the air. He could almost smell the copper-blood-ozone of battle, of Hogwarts, in the misty humid summer air; his dreams hung heavily in the front of his mind, rubble and killing curses and the ghosts of the dead, the same hazy harsh nightmares night after night.

The Burrow was quiet, now. He knew later, in the afternoon and evening, there would be a party that everyone had been trying to surprise him with, and people, and it was the first birthday he could really celebrate without the fear of being maimed or killed or scarred but who said he should celebrate at all?

Floorboards creaked near his room. He reached for a thin t-shirt, slipping it over his head, certainty trembling faintly through his fingertips. Despite trying to leave her behind (as she put it, he knew he was trying to keep her safe), despite faking his death, she still smiled when he came in the room, gave him a hard time, touched his hand under the dinner table. Maybe it meant nothing, just friends being friends, maybe it meant _everything_ , but it didn’t matter today. Like clockwork and earwax jelly beans and his parents’ love, it was an elemental truth: she would be here on this birthday (and maybe all the others, if he could stop acting like such a speechless prat).

Finally, his doorknob turned and a sharply red head poked its way through the crack, smiling sleepily.

“Morning,” Ginny whispered, hair loose and mussed over her shoulders.

Fumbling for his glasses, he pressed them to his face and smiled slightly as she slipped into the room, shutting the door behind her with a soft click. “Happy Christmas,” she added, soft and pale in the dawn.

“Not Christmas yet,” he said, following her as she strolled soundlessly towards the bed, her hands securely behind her back.

“Easter then,” she said as she sat on the end of the bed, a lean, Quidditch-toned leg hanging off one side, bare from mid-thigh down. Freckled and smooth, she sat and watched him with easy eyes, the sunlight casting a burnished halo around her hair.

He couldn’t help but scoot closer, his leg hanging parallel to hers, their knees touching. “Not that either.”

She pursed her lips. “It’s some sort of special day, though,” she mused, tilting her head.

Heat curled through his spine, the back of his neck hot; he swallowed hard. “Reckon so?”

“Yeah,” she said with a slanting smile, bringing her hands from behind her back. “Have a present for you and everything.”

Looking down, he watched as her fingers unfurled, revealing a small square package wrapped in newsprint, the Muggle kind. He touched it lightly with a smile, glancing up at her. “Didn’t have to do this, you know,” he said quietly.

She shrugged. “Wanted to. Something new to remember me by.”

“You going off somewhere?” he asked with feigned lightness, the corners of his chest tightening instinctively.

Her mouth twisted knowingly, eyes bright with amusement. “No. Just reckoned the memory of last year’s gift might be fuzzy.”

His eyes traced the planes of her freckled face, the curve of her smile. On the floorboards below, copper-orange-pink dawn inched towards them, dew and grass carried on the breeze. “Nothing fuzzy about it,” he said, voice low and quiet, all serious.

The faint flush on the apples of her cheeks pleased him. “You don’t need a refresher, then?” she asked softly.

“Wouldn’t say no,” he said hurriedly, bashfully, awkwardly pressing his hands over hers, the gift cool between them.

She cocked her head, smiling faintly. “You’re absolutely loony, Harry Potter. You’ve got a girl in your room and all you do is hold her hand,” she teased.

Mouth going dry, he searched for words inside his tight throat. “Didn’t know if you wanted anything else.”

“Why not?” she asked calmly. She was steady and solid in the sunlight, hair falling long and loosely around her face.

“Reckoned you might still be mad about… things,” he said finally, after a long moment of total blankness in his mind.

She raised a brow, skin warming under the sunlight. “If I decided to ignore you every time I was annoyed by you, we’d both be very lonely,” she said dryly. “You’re a prat. That doesn’t mean I can’t be with you.”

He could feel his face reddening, but managed not to feel too rattled. “All right. As long as that’s understood,” he said, voice even.

Grinning, she leaned in and kissed him softly, briefly, chaste and warm and very much the opposite of the kiss from his last birthday, but just as wonderful. He shut his eyes for a moment and lifted his hand to her cheek, her skin warm against his palm, the soft sleep smell of her surrounding him.

“You’re a prat for trying to leave me behind, you know,” she murmured against his mouth after a moment.

He smiled, the lingering tension in his chest breathing out into warmth, tingling in all his limbs. “And I’d do the same thing again,” he said, opening his eyes and finding her very close to his face, eyes bright.

“Reckoned so,” she said, smiling widely. “Happy Birthday. Want to open your gift?”

Shaking his head, he leaned into kiss her again, imprinting the feel and warmth and taste of her into his memories once again, to shake off the ghosts of the night, because now, after everything, what more could he need but this quiet morning with her in the soft copper dawn?

*  



End file.
